Turid Rugaas

Rugaas: "I own and run "Hagan Hundeskole" (dog school) and work with dogs full time.

I started out training my own dog and competed in obedience and working dogs, worked with rescue dogs and a lot of other dog related things. Took a course for instructors and functioned as an instructor for severaldifferent clubs for a period of 20-30 years. Got really tired of the non flexible way of training dogs and began in the '80 having my own courses.

I the end of the '80 I took a 1-year instructors school at Groruddalen veterinary clinic and stared a project trying to find a more simple and better method for a lot of exercises. Also at that time in started a longer and much bigger project in charting the calming signals in dogs together with a colleague of mine, Ståle Ødegård. The result was a slide show with lectures and a video.

In 1992 I went to Canada to the big Animals and US conference, met and got acquainted to a lot of dog trainers and several of them showed a lot of interest in my project with the calming signals. I started getting invitations abroad and the last 2-3 years the interest has been so overwhelming that I have stopped courses here in Norway. With around 50-60 trips around the world there is not room for much else.